[jdonn]

CNN.com has a poll on its front page every day, which of course is completely unscientific. However today's interested me since I've never seen such an even dispersion of answers. The question and their results were:

If you worked from home, your productivity would:
Increase greatly 24%
Decrease greatly 21%
Increase slightly 16%
Decrease slightly 18%
Stay the same 21%

So, what say the forums peanut gallery?

[Fluffy]

Decrease greatly, I work from home

[P_Marlowe]

Decrease.

I get easily distracted, ...

With kind regards
Marlowe

[helene_t]

I am afraid I would spend even more time on BBF if I worked from home.

[Echognome]

I think it's somewhat dependent on what you are used to doing. If you had a lot of work on your plate and needed it to get done for your job, you would get it done whether you worked from home or the office. However, it also depends on your type of work (e.g. a software programmer may be able to work better from home than the office, but work that requires teamwork will be better being around your other team members). My work involves projects with several team members and there is a benefit of being around them and able to quickly and informally check on their progress or answer questions. It is also the case that the office is not truly paperless, so being able to quickly look at something and give an answer is a benefit. All that being said, we do some of our work on the road or at home as a matter of course, so I voted for "decrease slightly."

[TimG]

I couldn't be less productive...at least from a work standpoint.

[mike777]

To be honest when I work in an office I never have more than a couple hours of work. I never figure out what the heck everyone is doing all day long.

My first full time job while also going to College full time took a few hours to do as night shift computer operator. I think I was barely 18.

After college I was a credit manager for a large oil company, watching the credit we gave other companies. That job took about an hour a day. I never could figure out what guys who had been doing this for 20 years did all day.

Same has been true for all my jobs in the office, what the heck do you guys do that takes 8-12 hours a day 5 -6 days a week.

[kenberg]

I'm a mathematician. One of the many great features of this profession is that it is really difficult to tell whether a mathematician is thinking, daydreaming or sleeping. Any of these things can be done equally well at home or in the office.

[mike777]

kenberg, on Jan 13 2009, 12:40 PM, said:

I'm a mathematician. One of the many great features of this profession is that it is really difficult to tell whether a mathematician is thinking, daydreaming or sleeping. Any of these things can be done equally well at home or in the office.

When I went back to graduate school as an "older student" I discovered that you Professors did not simply teach all day long. You have numerous outside jobs and souces of paychecks and are multitaskers. You hire us Grad students to teach for you, grade papers, hold office hours and do research for you.

I have always found in my office jobs my coworkers afraid to delegate, delegate and delegate some more. Back in the days when there were secretaries I always found she was more than capable of doing 80-90% of my job and often faster.

[Winstonm]

Quote

I'm a mathematician.

Hate to break the news so late, Ken, but that's not what was meant by "Be fruitful and multiply."

[vuroth]

I got told to be fruitful and multiply by a lady in the supermarket the other night. She might have used coarser language than that, though.

[RichMor]

I voted for 'stay the same'. I prefer to go to the office, but it is just a habit.

A lot of my coworkers take their laptops home, dial in, open email and an instant message window, and do whatever they do for about 6-7 hours. They seem to get a reasonable amount of work done.

And a lot of meetings are set up as teleconferences, often with a desktop visual link.

It's a matter of adaptation, personal and organizational. If the weather gets any worse, I may adapt (or move)

RichM

[Apollo81]

When I work at home, I VPN to my office computer, so it is pretty similar (most would say identical) to being at my office computer at work. However, I do notice a little bit of lag, particularly when I am using an IDE for software development. This is very irritating, and causes a significant loss of productivity when it happens. Interestingly, this only started happening when I changed from a 15.4" monitor running XP to a 17" widescreen running Vista, despite the Vista machine having much better RAM and processing power. I'm not sure what the source is: it could be the display drivers, something Vista-related, or something else.

On the flip side, if I am doing other work tasks that don't involve an IDE (of which there are many), I am more productive at home. This is because I feel that if I'm posting on BBO etc then I can take credit for the time if I'm in the office, but not if I'm at home. Thus when I'm working at home, I tend to actually be working.

Moral of the story: if I am working at home, I make sure I have work that doesn't use an IDE.

[Al_U_Card]

Depends on whether the porn filters are on...

[Winstonm]

vuroth, on Jan 13 2009, 02:02 PM, said:

I got told to be fruitful and multiply by a lady in the supermarket the other night. She might have used coarser language than that, though.

I assume this was the woman with the large melons?

[mike777]

IF nothing else I would think many would be more productive simply by not having to shower, dress, drive to work, drive home, change clothes. That gots to save alot of time. Add in all the time you save with hopefully fewer meetings, sitting around for starting the meeting, etc.

Just imagine if you tell your fellow workers, do your quota of office work and you get to go home....How many finish by 9AM?

[Apollo81]

I think the OP was asking about work productivity, not personal productivity.

[mike777]

Apollo81, on Jan 13 2009, 04:33 PM, said:

I think the OP was asking about work productivity, not personal productivity.

Interesting viewpoint.


I have never made that distinction, must admit it never entered my mind.

How long or hard it takes to get to work and home has always been a huge factor in my productivity both at work, getting to school, and back at home. In fact it might be the biggest factor. For many of my jobs over my lifetime simply getting to work and back home was the hardest part of the job.

Same with going to school, often simply getting there and back home was the hardest part.

[Elianna]

I teach high school.

I can't imagine teaching from home.

But I DEFINITELY prefer doing all the other work at home: grading, lesson plans, etc. Less distractions than at school.

[barmar]

I think it might end up being a wash for me.

When actually doing work, it doesn't matter too much where I am. I do it on the computer, and I can do that just as well at home. If I did it regularly I'd want a decent setup, with a nice big monitor like I have at the office; since I only do it occasionally now, I get by with the laptop screen.

There are distractions in both environments. At work there are other people in the adjacent cubicles, and you often get into non-work-related conversations. At home there can be other types of interruptions -- last week while I was working from home one afternoon I decided to do a load of laundry. There are also temptations like the TV.

Overall, I think I need the regimentation of having to go to the office on a regular basis.